Fun for all -

This is a portait of Chantel, my assistant at our studio. She does wonderful work, my wife and I could not resist sharing it with everone here. The first post is the original portrait that I took of her, if anyone wants to play with it I know she would love to see the different interpretations ...

The second post is Chantel's art work on her photo. We thought it was so different and fun we could not resist sharing it with you. It was done completely in Painter.

Roger

Chantel's Chantel ...

Good looking lady......She is very brave to let us play with her image.

One of you has a very steady hand, as that smudging around the eyes is not for the faint of heart..... Interesting results.

Roger your photograph is beautiful and her rendition of her image is unbelievable. One of the best I have every seen and sets a very high standard for all of us!!!!

jean

Roger,

What a beautiful shot. I agree with Goldcoin, those eyes on the smudge version, thats pretty incredible.

I thought it would make a good sketch, and then I tried to colorize.

-Lisa

Roger - thank you for the image and thank Chantel !

Have to agree with everyone here on what Chantel did, the eyes say it all.

Lisa - you have got the sketch down! and adding the color - very good.

I added color to the lips and eyes, did a cut out then light emboss.

Spinnnz beautiful color, beautiful sketch.

Jill. I like the coloring of only the eyes and the lip. Very nice.


I just could not think of anything other than what a great job Chantel did on herself. All I could think was "how we see ourself". So I worked on that grain.

Cropped added Chantel rendition of herself. Burned around the eye.
Worked opacity on the layers.

jean

Alas, another based on an action to be released July 1. :cool:

Roger - beautiful, thanks for sharing.
Lisa - nice colorization - looks like a lot of work, but worth it!
Jill - great look - modern art!
Jean - even more 'artsy' - looks like something on the wall of a studio in NY.
Danny - bw action - looks hand-drawn.nice
Here's mine ... probably doesn't qualify as 'art'...
Bill C

Looks arty enough to me, Bill. There are a lot of dimensions to this beast.

Did you colorize the eyes and/or lips a bit?

Danny ... thanks. No, just used the history brush to paint back some of the original detail..
Bill C

And, a 2nd one ...
Bill C

Roger, wonderful pic...thanks so much! Chantel’s version is absolutely wonderful. She should print and enlarge that!

Jill, striking! Love the bold contrast and touch of color...perfect choice here.

Jean... WOW! In her own eye? Great! This image goes straight into my keeper file for sure!

Danny, nice action.. has a watercolor feel.

Bill C, dark and moody works here, but I love abstracts so I vote for your bold outline version.. WOW!

I'm still packing and time is short, so I'll fall back on old faithful. :) Hope she likes purple.

Phyllis

Roger, thank Chantel for letting her face be our playground. :) Not so many people would be so bold!

Her version is very daring! If I'm not mistaken, that's more use of the liquify tool rather than smudging, right? Perhaps a mix of both.

Lisa--Very good choice for this photo! Excellent color combinations on the colorization. It's had to add color to black. Good work!

Jill--Very good! I like the grayscale cutout detail on the face.

Jean--Awesome!!! :) Eye of the beholder thang goin' on there!

Danny--Such a tease!!! ;) Like that action.

BillC--That's art if ever I saw it. You've got such a wonderful touch with those soft vignettes. I couldn't do one if I had to. Your second version is inspired! How did you do that?

Phyllis--Your old standby works every time! Who doesn't like purple?


Mine is *my* old standby. Added some color to the photo, then smudged away at this lovely girl.

Lisa, great color sketch, something I've never tried and not sure how to even start.

Jill, you stole my first idea LOL...great job also.

Jean, awesome imagination, I would have never thought of doing something like that.

BillC...you stole my second idea :) Mine is similar to yours, speaking of which......here it is.


Ken

Ken, that's terrific! How'd you do it? :)

Originally posted by themanda
Ken, that's terrific! How'd you do it? :)

I'll try to remember :) First I softened the entire image and applied a sepia tone. I created a new layer and flled it with white, added a layer mask to this layer and painted away the white with a cloud brush I got at Adobe Exchange.

Ken

Photoshop..... the brushes are freebies, so if anyone wants them and can't find them at Adobe Exchange, I'd be happy to e mail them to you..just write me at kburgess@cablespeed.com

WOW, Thanks.

Just want everyone to know we havn't ignored the wonderful work. I wanted to hold my comments to give Chantel the opportunity to say something first. Chantel won't see these until she comes in to work Monday. The only computer she really uses is at our studio - we are just about bursting waiting for Monday to come ...

Roger

I finally got to playing with this image, and had lots of fun.

I started with my traditional watercolor style.

Tyeise

While I was still playing, I tried several different outline techniques. This one is from the contours filter.

Tyeise

In playing with the outline and blend modes, I came across a version that I liked. I did need to edit it a little as the original lines were a bit more confusing, but I still like this one.

Tyeise

tyeise--i like all three, but my favorite is the first one. you've got a nice, soft touch with watercolors. excellent job on the colorization, too.

spiffy new avatar! :)

Hey Guys!
I was totally blown away by the response that photo got when I came into work today! You guys can do some really awesome stuff. I origianlly had Roger take some photos of me for my mom's birthday...she wanted a big one for the house and I wasn't too keen on a photo of myself really huge so I thought it would be neat to do something different to it, That way people would look at the effect and not so much the photo. She ended up really likeing it...I am going to send her a link to this thread so that she can check out all the different things that could be done to it. Thanks Guys!
Chantel

Amanda-
How did you get the skin color to look so real? Really Awesome Job!!
Chantel

Originally posted by roger_ele

Amanda-
How did you get the skin color to look so real?

I used an almost-but-not-quite skin tone color painted on a separate layer set to overlay. It was much too orange, so I played with hue/sat levels until it looked more natural. On new layers over that, I used black and white set to overlay to bring out the shadows and the highlights of your face. blurred a bit and lowered in opacity.

Thanks Amanda! I'm beat after traveling home today, and hope to head to bed soon. I hope to be able to spend a bit more time here and therefore be able to make more coherent comments.

As to the Avatar - that picture was taken over 10 years ago. Maybe sometime soon I'll get brave enough to post a current image.

Tyeise

why do you think i've only got my eyeball posted? :) it's all that's fit to see!!! :bawling:

Everyone, what great and inspiring interpretations:) You all made me work my butt off just to keep up with you!

Here's my try. The first thing I did was to smudge the entire photo with the smudge tool, using light and dark modes. I cheated and used the airbrush also. I painted out her clothing, and improvised a little. I then used a very small brush and painted her lips, earrings, eyes, headband. Blend mode color. I paint right on the image without selections, I do use layers. I painted the blk/wht image. I then went to Styles, Photographic effects, duotone texture. I used luminosity as the blending mode, about 55%. Flattened. This is one beautiful lady, it was difficult to mess with perfection:)

Wanda

Wanda, your rendition is stunning, thanks for the instructions.

Lisa, thank you, I'm glad you liked it. I must say I enjoyed your sketch version very much. It's one of the best I've seen:) I'm still struggling with the sketch thing, I'm never happy with I come up with:(

Wanda

Wanda, that's great! Looks like one of those airbrushed portraits from the 60's. :)

I doubt you have to work to keep up with us, though. You're too talented!!!

Amanda, thank you, you're sweet. But...you're one of those that inspires me and keeps me trying to do better. You do wonderful things with the smudge tool. I'm jealous:tongue: ;)

Wanda

And I feel exactly the same way about your work. :) You do amazing things and I'm continually trying to duplicate your product.

Guess we're just a mini mutual admiration society!! :) :)

Wanda - Wow!!! That took my breath away! It's beautiful!

Tyeise

tyeise, thank you very much. I really love your watercolor, absolutely wonderful.:) The other ones were great too, just that the watercolor is my favorite.

Wanda

To All regarding Chantel challenge

Just had to say that everyone has amazing talent and I so enjoyed seeing all the different renditions of Chantel's photo. I have several favorites but everyone does amazing work! Fun to see what can be done.

Kim ( Chantel's Mom )

Kim:

Thank you for checking in. Your "thumbs up" means a lot.

- - - - - - - -

Wanda...

You are amazing and a treasure! Your colorization (is that a word) is simply awesome (again).

- - - - - - - -
tyeise:

Especially like your traditional WC version. We Photoshop folks are envious. (really). For the Paint Shop Pro folks among us, could you detail some steps if that's doable? That's very impressive.

~Danny~

Originally posted by DannyRaphael
tyeise:

Especially like your traditional WC version. We Photoshop folks are envious. (really). For the Paint Shop Pro folks among us, could you detail some steps if that's doable? That's very impressive.

~Danny~

Hi Danny,

You should be able to do it in Photoshop too. The basic need is the AmphiSoft Simplifier filter. http://photoshop.msk.ru/ Can't you run that with your version of Photoshop? I thought it was a photoshop filter to begin with.

I start by running the simplifier filter, to settings appropriate for the individual image. It can vary a lot depending on the contrast and details.

I added a raster layer over it, with the blend mode set to color (legacy) and painted the colors on. I skip this step on colored images.

I add another raster layer and flood fill it with white, then use the eraser brush to erase the center and leave smudgy edge.

Then I merge the layers, and add a watercolor paper texture.

That's it.

Sometimes - depending on the image, I erase the background first, then add a soft color behind it instead, then run the filter, and add the texture, but it's still basically the same thing. I've posted several images with this method, and will show you the steps if needed. :)

(Photoshop - I always sort of feel like I'm cheating since it's so easy)

Tyeise

Blur Blur Blur Blur Dupe, glowing edges, invert, blend to overlay and fade.

A brief but quite a full list of actions really.

Nice pic thanks for posting.

Peter

Chantel in green....

Steve C.

My attempt kept it black and white

Palms

Expression in B/W